Saturation

How do you succeed as a filmmaker, despite the increasing challenges? Award-winning British director Joanna Hogg talks to four by three magazine about her films and collective A Nos Amours, the fascination and fallibility of memory, artistic inspiration and expression and the importance of cinema.

How does extraordinary sensibility manifest itself through the moving image on screen? American director Kelly Reichardt talks to four by three magazine about her latest film Certain Women, the journey of life and how to answer the question of how to live.

Have we stopped to be and given over our lives to the digital ether of the internet? Writer Nelly Crane explores Werner Herzog's latest documentary Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, reflecting on our seemingly limitless love for the machines we have created.

In a world of rising racism and intolerance could relativism guide us to a better society? Ana Sandoiu explores the philosophy of Richard Rorty, the importance of empathy and the value of a relativism.

How can things exceed the language we use to name them? John Winn examines Cy Twombly's assemblages, while reading the works in conversation with Giorgio Agamben, Arthur Danto, Kate Nesin and postwar New York artist Robert Rauschenberg.

Is cinema saturated with the wrong intentions? Iranian filmmaker, writer and human right activist Mohsen Makhmalbaf talked to four by three about the purpose of cinema, how it relates to art, politics and philosophy, while recounting his collaboration with Abbas Kiarostami on Close-Up and the continuous censorship he is subject to.

What can the work of Mike Kelley teach us about the media landscape of today? Artist and critic John Miller explores Kelley’s manifesto A Stopgap Measure, the rise of Trump and the politics of our over-saturated image culture.

Are our lives saturated with stuff? Philosopher Emrys Westacott questions our seemingly inexhaustible need to acquire more and more stuff, tracing this behaviour back to the dawn of humanity and showing its exploitation by modern capitalism, asking what the relationship between our stuff and our sense of identity is.

Are we confusing objectivity with subjectivity? Do we require more, not less, subjectivity? Philosopher Nicholas Joll presents Theodor Adorno’s take on the difference between objectivity and subjectivity in Minima Moralia, applying it to film, while questioning the implications for evaluating aesthetic judgements in contrast to science.